Milk snatcher

Margaret Thatcher died today.

Let's get a few things out of the way: I feel sorry for her family's loss, and also a lingering set of twilight years with dementia followed by a stroke is an unpleasant way to go. And yes, she was the first female Prime Minister.

Right. Now we have said that, let's say some other things.

I will not mourn the end of a woman who is responsible for some fucking awful things in our country, and is still responsible now. I don't have a full set of all the awful things she did, but during her time as Prime Minister the working classes of this country were ground down into worklessness, entire communities made into poverty-ridden ghost towns. Those cities haven't recovered yey. Those cities in the north, in Scotland, in Wales, may never recover because the poisonous politics that started with her still tell them that they're wastrels, that they're not worth anything. The problems we have now still continue, and her political descendents are destroying what is left in some of those communities.

I will not mourn Section 28, a legacy I was still dealing with when I was in comprehensive education, a time when queer kids and adults were given no support by public funds. By 'no support' this meant no protection of homophobic bullying, amongst a raft of other things. This still continues.

I will not mourn someone who supported apartheid in South Africa.

I will not mourn someone who sank the Belgrano when it was retreating.

I will not mourn privatisation of vital services. I will not mourn the idea that it's somehow okay for people to make profit off the back of heating, light and clean water.

I will not mourn someone who kickstarted the excesses of our financial markets.

I am the daughter of working class parents. I grew up on the edge of one of those decimated communities. So you'll forgive me, right now, if I am having a drink. I'm not doing it to celebrate her death, but I am doing it to remember all of the tragedy and horror she caused, and her legacy is still causing.

Over dramatic? Yeah, probably. Depending on when the funeral is, though, it may well block my ability to get into work as the cortege will be going very near my offices. I have a long weekend coming up, but unless the funeral is on Friday or Monday it will directly affect my ability to get into work. Whether I want to or not, it's being put directly in my way.

Those are my thoughts. I appreciate you may have different ones. I don't pretend to understand them, if I'm honest.

A bit of consideration, people

As we all probably know, it's currently an employers market when it comes to jobs. I was staying in London with a family friend for a set of interviews, and he wondered if they still reimbursed you for travelling to interviews. I laughed uproariously. I do dimly remember a time, back just before I graduated, when job applications had dire messages telling you that they couldn't reimburse for travel. So clearly, it used to happen. Not any more.

I have become used to not having results from job applications. It's got to the point where getting a rejection letter is actually rather enjoyable, because at least SOMEONE has read the application.

You know what's really bloody rude though? When you've been for an interview and they still don't get in contact with you. One interview I went to – three weeks ago! - told me I'd hear back within 24 hours. After a week, I sent a polite e-mail enquiring about when I might hear a response. At the start of the next week, they told me. It is only today that they've rejected me. And not just a rejection, oh no. They told me that they'd 'decided not to recruit for the role'. So you've dragged me down to London and now you've decided the job doesn't exist? Are you fucking KIDDING me?

There's a bright side to all this, and it's that I've actually been offered a job. Yeehaw! They also didn't get back to me within the predicted timeframe, but I did get a message saying there would be a delay. It takes two minutes to send an e-mail like that, employers. It's not hard. The job I've got is the one I wanted more than the rest by quite a large margin, but I needed work for my move to London.

There is also the very real possibilities of what happens if you wait a long time to let someone know the results. I am, it must be said, enjoying telling people that since my interview I have interviewed for, been offered and accepted another job.

One of the elements of my new job? Sending feedback to candidates who have interviewed for the company, successful or otherwise. Having this element of respect for people who don't even work for the company is a very good sign, in my eyes. Also, no poverty for Christmas. Wheeee!

Just... have some respect, employers. Someone has taken the time to apply to your company, travel to the interview, iron the interview suit, go through the preparation and the nerves. Even if they're no good, it takes a tiny amount of time to let people know how they've got on. We may be the faceless mass of desperate people to you, but one day you might be the same boat. Think about it.

Shock realisation: we are governed by morons

David Cameron says he 'may' call a referendum on the E.U.

I have come to the conclusion, spurred on by this final news story, that David Cameron just doesn't care any more and is spurting whatever daft opinion the1922 Committee has come with this time. No more benefits for anyone, particularly not those scum who are under 25! Let's leave the EU and go to war with France again for good measure! Schools abolished for poor people!

I'm being deliberately facetious there, but this week it's felt a little like that. It's that or he's deliberately winding up the left with a series of daft proposals in order to get the headlines away from Jimmy Carr and corrupt banks, possibly because he doesn't want to rock that boat too tightly. (Is Jimmy Carr finally paying his tax the reason for the freeze of fuel duty? Doubt it.)

I really dislike the right using the E.U. as catnip for the crazier fringe, trying to bring in the nastier elements and probably nark off the Lib Dems at that. Genuine worries about sovereignity always seem to be taken over by frothing xenophobes, who classify the E.U. as a sort of Gomorrah of liberal ideas/fascist removal of sovereign rights AT THE SAME TIME, despite the fact that all countries seem to send over a contingent of equally bizarre people who reckon that standing for the European parliament is totally the best way to remove themselves from it.

I feel a little fatigued with the news at the moment. When it's a graduate specific story, it's a little easier to comment on it in the spirit of the blog, but stuff like this just keeps me so utterly flabbergasted that I'm unable to rebut them. It's a bit like being asked to explain why falling in a pit of spikes is a bad idea – it's so patently a bad idea that it's hard to know where to start, as it includes stuff that you assume a rational human being would know instinctively.

Possibly assuming that we are governed by rational human beings is where I've been going wrong.

Disorientated Graduate: news edition!

I would like to have to measured, considered thoughts on the news, but mostly I am just baffled by it. Let's start with one of the major stories, according to the BBC, of the last few days:

Church of England claims that gay marriage will de-stabilise the country.

They also seem to be of the opinion that allowing two ladies or two gents to get married will ruin marriage forever. Unlike, say, divorce. It's perhaps worth pointing out at this point that whilst Jesus was quite vocal on the issue of divorce (i.e. bad) he was surprisingly quiet about homosexuality. This is odd, considering the obsession some modern Christians have with the latter rather than the former.

Look, I can't add anything to this debate that's particularly fresh. I am a lady who is married to a dude and we got married in a church which we were lucky enough to be able to do. If the church doesn't want to marry two people, that's their decision. It's got nothing to do with how the state chooses to define marriage. If anything, extending gay marriage is an inherently small-c conservative thing to do, bigging up the idea of stable relationships in an old-fashioned mould. I don't think marriage is for every relationship, or indeed every person, and that's fine by me. I also happen to think that civil partnerships are ace ideas for people that don't want to be defined as in a marriage. Let everyone get married to whomever they wish, or civil partnerships.

Government, stop pussyfooting around the issue and pandering to the bishops in the House of Lords who you should have thrown out years ago. Let straight couples get a civil partnership, and let gay couples get married. And if a religious organisation chooses to marry gay people – the Quakers and Unitarians very much wish to do this – then let them do that. Don't be dictated to be a church that was, from one perspective, set up in order to allow Henry VIII to get his end away.

Now we're done with equal rights, let us move onto the economy:

FTSE bosses' pay rose by 11% last year.

Really? Ah, good, we must be out of recession then, because surely everyone would get that pay rise, right, down to the cleaning staff and the lady that pushes the tea trolley? No, wait, that doesn't happen? And share prices are down? And the economy is still fucked? And yet, these people are getting obscenely richer whilst the masses struggle?

THIS SORT OF CAPITALISM ISN'T WORKING, PEOPLE. IT IS TIME TO NOTICE THIS.

Now, to something about the alma matar!

It's a little early for the students of St Andrews at the 7am torch relay.

YES. THREE MONTHS TOO EARLY. IT IS THE SUMMER HOLIDAYS. I can't believe I've had to crack out the Sisko picture AGAIN.

I'm not even in St Andrews anymore and it makes me want to die as a statement for sheer fucking stupidity. Also, Harry Potter and Gin Society? I'm not saying that it doesn't exist, but I was president of the Doctor Who Society for two years and I drank like a fish, so if that society slipped under the radar then it must have been a little low on the whole publicity issue.

But yes. SUMMER HOLIDAYS PEOPLE.

That's enough ranting for now, I think.

Language

I can get very prickly about language used towards me. I swear like a motherfucking cunty sailor, when left to my own devices, and when I'm stressed it gets even worse. I can swear fairly aggressively at people when I need to as well.

Here's the thing, though; I am of the opinion that swearing is a great stress relief. Honestly, it does the soul good to release a torrent of semi-taboo words, particularly when it's inventive. I will never be Malcolm Tucker in terms of bile, but that's the way of these things, what with life not being scripted just yet.

Certain words, though, are less good. They're innocuous words in their own right, but it's the way they're used. In many ways, you see, I'm lucky; I'm white, British, essentially middle-class. A lot of innocuous words slide right over me. There are words used towards me, though, that drive me mad. Babe. Girl. Queen. Honey. These words are okay out of context, and indeed used at me are still okay too, depending on who it is who uses them. My mum called me 'love' is okay. My husband calling me 'honey' isn't insulting, as I know the context.

Strangers, though? Oh, that is not cool. I went to the recycling centre to do a massive recycling trip at the weekend. I drove, as Mr DG doesn't have his license, and frankly I tend to keep on top of the recycling more than he does anyway. It was a Saturday, so it was busy, something I was expecting. A council worker was at the gate, and motioned for me to wind down my window.

“It's quite busy,” he told me. “That going to be a problem for you, girl?”

I prickled. “Excuse me?”

“It's busy, will you be alright girl?”

I don't want to be called madam at the recycling centre. Good grief, I work in a periphery of the building trade, I speak fluent builder. I know that the meaning behind the words wasn't insulting – there was a kindness there, in fact. What made me prickle was that he'd seen me driving, assumed I would panic (I have been driving for over seven years now!) and referred to me as 'girl'. He certainly wouldn't refer to Mr DG as 'boy'.

I get this in work a lot. One customer called me 'babe' that often I very politely flipped out, and pretty much shouted back “MY NAME IS ACTUALLY DISORIENTATED GRADUATE THANK YOU” although I didn't shout all I wanted to shout, which involved me howling that I didn't appreciate being named after a child and also that I didn't need to have any feminine specific names thrown at me in a professional context.

Obviously directed insults are a different thing. Call me a bitch, a slag, anything like that to my face and I have a comeback. Call someone else a racial term around me and hell, I'll do some shouting there too because I find those words despicably insulting. But call me babe, girl, anything like that, I don't know what to do, because those words are more insidious. They belittle me, put me in my place, make sure I know who I am. It's not deliberate, it's just one of many subtle ways that society conspires to make sure we're stuck with who and what we are, and as a rule it's not done with any great malice.

If anyone has any suggestions about how to deal with this (I can hardly shout my name at everyone who does this) then I'm appreciate them.

Student loan ridiculousness (again)

Student loan early repayment penalty proposal' abandoned.

As far as I can tell, pretty much everyone is on the wrong about this one.

Student loans, from what I can tell, are created and administered by people who generally don't have a student loan to pay off themselves because they were students back in the days of things like grants. This was not financially sound as a system. Fine. This is not the argument I am here to have today.

I owe the government tens of thousands of pounds, and I pay back £13 a month at the moment. I don't think I'm ever going to eligible for any theoretical early repayment penalty, or if I am it won't be for a long time which rather takes away the 'early repayment' option. Most students are the same.

Fun story: I know people who got a student loan, put it into a high-interest savings account (this was in 2005 – remember high interest savings?) and then paid the lot back promptly upon graduation, and have used the interest on the loan to have a nest-egg to buy a house. Instinctively, I feel this is wrong and that's with a lot of love and respect to and for the people involved. However, these are the risks taken with the system, and at least they've paid back their loans. It's a lot more than most people manage to do, and at least the money is 'back in the pot', as it were, for future students.

This is a small minority of people. However, a much larger majority of graduates desperately want to pay their loans off. I hate being in debt. Hate it, hate it, hate it. I grew up in a house where Debt Was Bad, and I say this as someone currently surfing the wave of the graduate overdraft so possibly a little hypocritically. If I won the lottery, or managed to get a high-paying job, I would love to pay my loan off quicker.

There are those that will take advantage of the system, and they will end up paying less than less well-off students. The simple – and sad – fact is that richer students will find many things easier in university whilst we live in an unfair society. They just won't take the loan, if they have parents that can support them, which is of course essentially what paying off the loan early is.

Penalising early repayment discourages ambition. That's the simple end of it. “It's to protect lower-income students,” they say. This is bollocks. It says that lower-income students can just stay where they are, on low incomes. If they really wanted to help low-income students, fees would be lower or there would be no loans at all. Don't take away people's pride in being able to pay back debt sooner, and I'm talking to you, Liberal Democrats and National Union of Students.

The system is what's unfair, and faffing about with early and late repayment is just stupid. (And yes, 'faffing about' is a technical term.)

Well, duh.

Graduates without work experience face struggle to secure jobs, report says.

In other news, report proves Pope to be Catholic?

More than one-third of the graduate vacancies available are expected to be taken by people who have already worked for a firm while they were studying, a report by High Fliers Research has found.

This is, shall we say, obvious news. Employers prefer graduates who have a degree and experience within the working world. It's an absolute bastard, particularly when you realise that getting the experience is a catch-22 situation. Then again, I assumed that when I left university I had work experience. My work experience was in cleaning, retail, and care homes. I thought that having worked alongside studying since I was sixteen would show I was hard-working and knew how the working world operated.

That was a bubble that was burst quickly.

But a total of 36% of vacancies on offer are likely to be filled by applicants who worked for the company concerned while they were at university.

That's a bloody big chunk of vacancies put to one side for people who have already worked there, within vocational subjects. I don't resent those soon-to-be-graduates for their ability to know what they want to do with their lives at eighteen, or indeed their engineering/architectural/etc know-how, but I am jealous.

The main problem is that as a rule, you only work this particular issue out too late. It's difficult enough getting a job, let alone the mythical graduate job, and any job-seeking graduate could tell you that work experience is required.

So, if you're reading this, you will probably assume that I was a dim student who should have done work experience in Something Relevant, and that I deserve everything coming to me. To an extent, I suppose this is true. I should have worked harder to get work experience, or an internship. You know, the illegal ones where they don't pay you? Unfortunately, a combination of paying your own way through university (student loan pays the rent; what do you think pays the rest?) and living very far from London makes this a tricky proposition indeed.

I see the perspective of the employers. I really, really do. You'd rather have employees who have experience of the industry, and hell, you've got your pick of candidates. The perpetuation of this system means that you get free employees during the summer, too. Why not?

Well... because you're perpetuating a system wherein it's not what you know, it's who you know. Work experience involves being able work for free, and knowing someone to give you that experience. Talented graduates who are outside of the magic circle are not given a chance to prove themselves. I'm not a supporter of the idea that graduates should jump in at the top – you're young, you don't know very much, I get that. I'm happy to start at the bottom and work my way up through according to my merits.

But as my merits do not include living in the South-East, or having parents who were able to support me through university, or indeed having parents with friends who runs important firms, I'm not even getting the chance to get in at the bottom of the ladder.

However, presenting the idea that graduates need work experience as news? Yes, we had worked that on out for ourselves, thank you very much!

Thinking space

Ever since I was about twelve, I've always wanted to live alone. I would decorate how I want, keep it exactly to my personal level of cleanliness – no higher, no lower – and watch exactly what I wanted to television. When I got a bit older I realised that living with one other person would be acceptable, mostly because having someone else to keep the bed warm at night is very nice indeed.

Mostly stuff doesn't work out like that. I lived with a small family of mother, father and younger sister until I went to university. I spent university in houseshares with a few people, some of whom I got on with, some of whom... not so much. Still, I assumed that when I left I would get to Live By Myself and that it would be Splendid. I actually did a summer of living by myself, when my housemates went on holiday/home, and I spent the summer drinking too much and heckling the TV. It was good times.

Unfortunately, the only job I could secure for myself after leaving university was a retail job in the city near my hometown; a transfer from my university job. So I moved back in with my parents. Bless them, they were over the moon. I drank a bottle of wine that night, stole a packet of my Mum's cigarettes when her and my Dad had gone to bed and sat in the garden, chain-smoking and crying about being a failure. (I am not a smoker; very occasionally, it seems like a sensible thing to do.) I then lived with my parents and sister for a year, falling into all of the same traps of being eighteen, before eventually moving back into a houseshare. The houseshare was significantly better than living with my parents, and the couple I lived with were fabulous humans, but still, it wasn't what I wanted.

Now I live with Mr Disorientated Graduate in a flat of our own and I'm moving towards actually having the place I want. These flats have paper thin walls, though, and I haven't had a full night's sleep for months as the baby in the flat downstairs is teething. Apparently the only noise that can penetrate my earplugs is the sound of a child crying in another property. BAD TIMES.

This is the economic truth of many a graduate, I think. Although we dream of the flat we'll own ourselves, and decorate, and live to our own rules, the sad truth is that we simply can't afford it. Although Mr DG and I are quietly determined to at least live somewhere with really good soundproofing next time, we're doing fairly well thus far for people our age. As that baby gives yet another wail downstairs, and another set of graduates prepare for their first Christmas as 'boomerang babies', the sad truth is that graduates are some of the lowest people on the rung of houses. The only option to squash together in family homes, in blocks of flats, in what will probably be increasingly rubbish housing.

This post is brought to you by a borderline hysterical lack of sleep. This may be a little obvious.

Youth unemployment

I have had the kind of fortnight that makes me fantasise very seriously about quitting my job in dramatic high fashion. It veers between telling arsey clients exactly where they can stick their increasingly high pitched demands for immediate attention or alternatively just throwing a shoe at my boss and flouncing out of the door. How exactly I will flounce with only one shoe on I'm not sure, but it's important not to over-analyse such fantasies.

Only once in my life have I quit a job without another one lined up. I was, for all of a day, working in a cleaning gang for a Pontins contract. The gangmaster was a twat is a suit who was there for all of three minutes before 'leaving us to it'. Never trust a bloke in a suit running a cleaning company,in my fairly considerable cleaning experience. We spent all day cleaning out room after room after room, with no lunch break and then we ended up working an hour longer as some of the other gangs didn't do their rooms fully. The supervisor at Pontins was the most awful person I've ever had the displeasure of working with, and as one of the few women in the gang to speak English she took out a lot of her anger at me. I finished the shift, went home, burst into tears and didn't go back. I wasn't paid for the extra two hours.

The point of all this is that I managed to get another job reasonable swiftly, this time as a carer in a nursing home, which I have relatively good memories of and still pop in occasionally to see the surviving residents. I had enough money to see me through the summer and set me up for another year in uni.

I don't think I could manage that again. I am hyper-aware of my financial responsibilities, mostly because I pay the rent and also I have a wedding looming, and that shit is expensive. My fear of poverty is higher than my loathing of the job, and poverty and unemployment is a very real fear right now.

Youth unemployment is, roughly speaking, when someone between 16-24 isn't in employment, education or training. This is charmingly referred to as being a NEET. I have never been a NEET, I say with some quiet pride, but my sister has. In less than a year I am no longer a youth in employment terms, but I still worry about the future.

Youth unemployment in Britain has now topped one million, and if you think this isn't a graduate issue then you have your head in the sand. It is equally an issue for school-leavers and college-leavers, but crucially it means a generation is being screwed. It's being screwed by short-sighted policies, by increasing unemployment across generations, by the economy. It means I worry about spiralling into the situation in Spain. I look at the protests across the Middle East, where a major factor for social change and unrest is – you guessed it – youth unemployment.

I worry that I am stuck in this job, which whilst paying tolerably well has no chances for progression or training. Worse, though, is the worry that if I quit it I will have no chances for, well, anything, and will eventually just take a worse job in order to fill up the days. I don't exactly have what you might consider a strong work ethic, but I like to have a structure to my day, and to feel that I'm doing something at least tolerably useful.

So, for now, fear of the unknown will keep the image of throwing a shoe at my boss a fantasy.

Commuting

The problem with commuting is that I can't claim that we were fibbed to about this one. Commuting is universally acknowledged to be basically pants. It's stressful, other humans are dreadful, public transport and roads are worse, and it represents everything that is wrong. Perhaps it needs pointing out be enthusiastic people who reckon they can totally apply to jobs that are about three hours away from where they actually live.

I'm not sure if what I do to go to work counts as 'commuting' but it can quite often represent the most depressing part of my day. Bearing in mind that I work with the general public when they're angry, this is quite a statement.

I used to get the train to my old job. It was a small local train with distressing efficiency; I was never late, there was always a seat and generally a copy of the Metro. Being Trendy Shop Work, I was generally in jeans and looking fabulous(ish), whilst those surrounding me were in business suits. I quite enjoyed it, all things considered. I had time to read, which is always precious.

Now that I work in a rural area, public transport was never a possibility. There is a train station half an hour's walk from work, but it never made sense to take it. I've been driving in to work for the last two years, but only recently has it become the type of drive where you quietly debate crashing into a wall for a bit of variety, with the move to Seaside Town.

My main problems, in no particular order:

1.Recently local councils have been deliberately planning road closures in my route to work, and then moving them to my new route when I finally manage to find yet another new route through twisting country lane. At one point I found myself having a full blown tantrum in the car because all I wanted in the whole world was to be at home cooking my tea, and instead I was stuck in YET ANOTHER diversion.

2.Schoolchildren. Now, I am aware that people have to go to school. I accept this. I went to school myself, you know. I am constantly astonished at how many kids are driven in these days. The drive home, as a rule, is much easier; driving in the morning involves passing two high schools, one sixth-form college and three primary schools. That's with a little effort; if I went some other, theoretically quicker routes, the numbers would double. Irritatingly, the high school in Seaside Town I have to pass starts at 8.30am (i.e. when I'm leaving the house) whereas the high school in Home Town on the way to work starts at 9.00am. There is no way around this that is legal.

ALSO. I drive past a very swanky private establishment, and if one more person cuts me up in a large white 4x4 I will just drive into it. There's one woman in a white BMW monstrosity (why are they so big?) who I swear does it for fun.

3.It is impossible to drive whilst reading.

4.Breakfast radio is appalling. Radio 4 is depressing; Radio 2 is too chirpy; local stations are simply abhorrent. I tend to listen to Radio 1 and then channel hop during the vast majority of the music. This is perhaps because I am an old person now. The journey home isn't too bad; Scott Mills is quite good on Radio 1, and if the guest of the day is of your Cher Lloyd variety, Simon Mayo is acceptable on Radio 2. But oh, the mornings.

5.Every other driver appears to feel just as agitated and unhappy as I do in the mornings, leading to an awful lot of road rage. My cursing is both invective and inventive.

6.The depressing knowledge that I am doing all of this just to go to work, and spending £20 a week on petrol for the privilege of doing so.

In The Ragged Trousered Philanthropist, one of the things that Frank is agitating for is the right to be paid for travel time to work. I never agreed with this until I had an hour long round trip every day to get to work.

I realise I have no right to complain. The reason we moved from walking distance from my work is that Mr DG can't drive, and as he works in Seaside Town he was enjoying a two hour trip into work every day, and I'm not that cruel to make him do that after a nine hour day. If I see that ominous 'ROAD CLOSED' sign again, though, I may think otherwise.

IT'S NOT DEAD MONEY YOU FOOLS

If one more person tells me that renting a house is 'dead money' I swear, I will scream. In fact, I reached this point quite a while ago, but it seemed impolitic to start shrieking at the downstairs neighbour, particularly because I had just hit his car and we had arranged matters fairly convivially up until that point.

When you come out of university, you are almost certainly without money. You are without money in exactly the same way that someone who left school at eighteen is without money. To buy a property is inordinately expensive, tens of hundreds of thousands of pounds. As such, it's frankly bizarre to expect someone in their early twenties to afford a house.

And yet renting is considered by anyone about ten years older than you to be the worst decision you could possibly make. “It's dead money!” they will cry. “Save up for a deposit! Find the money! It will be your PENSION!”

So as I sit here paying my rent, I would like to take a moment to take you through why the above statements are a lie, difficult, impossible, and a downright evil lie, in that order.

1. 'Dead money' is a phrase I particularly loathe. It's that weird, Thatcherite fetishism of money, that money should in some way be doing something. The money IS doing something, and that something is putting a roof over my head. You tell me that's dead money and I'll invite you to sleep outside.

A lot of people choose to live with their parents in order to save up for a mortgage. That's fine. That's your funeral. I lived with my parents for a year, until my sister and I were having daily screaming arguments and I spiralled into what I now realise was the beginnings of a bad bout of... I don't know what, exactly, as I don't wish to be too dramatic, but I think I may have cracked if I'd stayed much longer. It was the point I realised I was crying into some toast on a daily basis that I knew something had to give. I houseshared for a time, and now I'm sharing with Mr DG. I couldn't afford to live by myself, and neither could the majority of people I know. I found the method that worked for me.

This method keeps me with a remarkable sense of self-worth and also means that I am now of much better terms with my family. My parents are even coming for tea tomorrow. That is a healthy parent-child relationship, aged 24. My mother still desperately trying to iron my shirts was really not that good.

2. That said, saving up for a deposit is a jolly good idea. I am all in favour of savings. I really, really am. Mr DG and I try to squirrel away what we can every month, admittedly currently towards The Great Social Event Of 2012 i.e. our wedding, but it means we know we can do it. We don't go out a great deal. We eat cheaply. Buying new clothes are a distant world. Savings are a priority, for us.

However. You need approximately 10-20% of the worth of a house to get a mortgage. An average house around here is £100,000 pounds. That's £10-20,000. My annual salary is somewhere between those two figures. So that's at least a year of saving, even if I somehow managed to spend £0 in that year. So, er, where is my deposit meant to have come from between then and now?

Before any smartarse points it out, I am aware that at the moment it tends to be cheaper in terms of monthly payments when you compare mortgage vs. rent. However, I refer you to the £20,000 deposit above.

3. 'Finding the money is entirely possible'. Unfortunately, none of my wealthy relatives have yet revealed themselves. Bastards. I have also failed to find an old map with an 'X' marked on a treasure island, win the lottery, or worked out a way to rob a bank that is morally correct and 100% likely not to get myself caught.

4. A pension?! MY PENSION?!! What? The money is LOCKED WITHIN THE HOUSE. Locked there UNTO FOREVER. That's like saying that my rather lovely pair of Converse (three years old this year!) is a pension plan. That's not how it works at all. I have bought the shoes, I own the shoes, I will not somehow miraculously get the money back from the shoes. It is money invested, yes. It is a sensible investment, as they go. However, your pension is your pension and your house is your house. Telling people their house was their pension is the reason why we are about to have a whacking great pensions crisis. (Guess what generation is paying for that one, too?)

In conclusion: your average graduate cannot and does not have a mortgage. Your average graduate spends the first few years of post-graduate life doing doggy paddle to keep above water. If you can afford, and want, an aspire to a house then please, go for it! If you can't, though, don't go insane trying to get one. Don't make yourself ill. Try not to encourage any more recessions in terms of becoming over-stretched in your borrowing. (Think of the next generation of graduates there, perhaps.) Try to remember that having a roof over your head is good and safe money, and that our communal fetishism over property-owning as a nation is just plain weird.

And don't ever, ever tell me again that renting is 'dead money' because so help me I will not be responsible for my actions.

There is a Graduate Myth post here, somewhere, but I felt a bit of rage was possibly the way forward.